america loves immigrants, part one: the italians

A two-minute look at how america has REALLY greeted the poor, tired and huddled masses yearning to be free. Contrary to popular belief, no immigrants were ever welcomed to America. Each group came over and experienced fear and discrimination. Like the Irish and Eastern Europeans, Italians weren't considered white. The eugenics movement considered us inferior stock and wanted us sterilized. Educators thought we were educationally challenged.
The best way I know how to deal with all this is through satire. Thus, the old newsreel takeoff. I call it "part one" because I hope that others will do similar works on their families' immigrant experiences.

Excerpt from a one-man show by San Francisco performer Tommi Avicolli Mecca called "Italian Queer Dangerous."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• immigrants
• italian/american
• immigrant
• rights
• italians
• in
• america
• ellis
• island
• immigration
• politics
• history
• commentary
• government

[avimecca]

fleiva30: I agree that far too many Italian Americans have joined the majority culture in dumping on others...that's why I made the video, to remind my paesani of what things were like less than 100 years ago. We were not considered white back then. A lot of the early immigrants from southern Italia were radicals, like Sacco and Vanzetti, Vito Marcantonio, Angela Bambace, etc. They didn't want to assimilate and they didn't buy into the racism and imperialism of this country.

[xilpix]

Gli americani credono che gli italiani sono scuri per via dell'invasione araba. Quegli ignorantoni non sanno che gli arabi hanno occupato solo la Sicilia, dalla quale sono stati espulsi più tardi.

Non sanno un cazzo, ma si credono molto furbi.

[italianochicka]

italian is the best race.

[LouiseHans10]

@TheBlissfulSpirit BTW Cristoforo Colombo was Italian too: the Spanish queen paid for the expedition...

[TheBlissfulSpirit]

Italians as immigrants as inferior ??! When America was named after Amerigo Vespucci who was the first to declare that today's America is not part of Asia but a new and separate continent !? This is one reason why North America is named America & S. AMERICA has COLUMBIA, and N. America has the District of Columbia. If you Google up Columbus you can see where Columbus landed and claimed the discoery for Spain but Italian Vespucci preceeded Columbus. Italy was far superior throughout history !

[ondasuondaable]

@xilpix sono troppo ignoranti

[fleiva30]

italian/americans are forgeting how their great grandparents were discriminated and therefore they themselves are fucking racist towards hispanic immigrants....!!!SHAME

[98bigbutt]

Also the Irish and the Italian-Americans shit on the blacks as well.

[98bigbutt]

Meanwhile Italians and Irish-Americans today are shitting on immigrants from Latin America.

[baznian]

Only native americans are not immigrants

[munich84ss]

wow this is the yankees gratitude toward the italians who has discovered the american continent.

i'm curious to know if who has realised the video is a native american or not? if not also his ancestors are immigrants!

[southamerican888]

What? dont you want accept the true about your people, most Italian third generation they like to descriminate, im from Southamerica but i look as well as Mexican i have never been in Mexico however when the police stop me they ask me? Excuse me Sir where are you from Mexico a horrible police that look like like classic Italian guy big nose white face uhhh horrible most of them look like Roman imperial citizen however they think they are better than you becacuse they were born here becarefull